294. Are Extroverts Better Leaders? PLUS! 5 A.I. proof skills, Zuckerberg’s digital clone and new job red flags

22:33Welcome back to Truth or Lie. It's that time of the week where we take a popular workplace idea and ask Leanne if the research actually backs it up. Fun fact, it's not always Leanne. we had Dr. Jake on two weeks ago. We had the women from...

22:46Leanne:Alexis Sarner did our Truth or Lie last week. And then we've got another guy coming up, Chris, who I think everyone's going to really like. He's got a really, really good one. Anyway, this week, this week, this week, come on, I'll stick to it, this week. So the claim is extroverts make more effective leaders. And to be fair, it's pretty easy to see where that's come from because you think of Winston Churchill or Steve Jobs or Richard Branson or Oprah or Sheryl Stamberg. these kind of people are the sort of people we celebrate as being magnetic and commanding and the sort of people who walk into a room and just fill it but is it actually true so liam are extroverts more effective leaders than introverts truth or lie you know how i like to just start by nailing down exactly what we're talking about yes so just fast forward 30 seconds don't worry there's two definitions here that we need to we need to agree on before we move on So first of all, what do we mean by extroversion?

23:41Leanne:And second, what do we mean by effective leadership? So extroversion, as it is rightly defined, don't be giving this Myers-Briggs nonsense. Extroversion is one of the big five personality traits. And the big five, and this is important, is a trait-based approach to personality. So trait means we sit on a continuum. So introversion is one end, extroversion is the other. And we all sit somewhere on that continuum. Whereas Myers-Briggs would want to put you in the box. so you're either extrovert or you're introvert and never the two shall meet. So in this context and in any useful context, any correct context, extroversion is one of the big five personality traits.

24:20Leanne:According to research, extroversion as a definition is basically when someone is orientated towards the external world. So extroverts really like social attention. They get that through being assertive and sociable and dominant in a lot of cases. they get energy from being around people and they're biologically wired for what psychologists call higher reward sensitivity which basically means they're naturally driven to seek status. Introversion is basically the opposite so it's an orientation towards the inner world of ideas and feelings and introverts are quieter and usually more emotionally reserved and they recharge through spending time alone rather than being around lots of people.

25:03Leanne:So that's what we mean by the definition of extroversion assertive sociable dominant effective leadership and the definition that is a little bit trickier because how long is the piece of string but the research basically splits into two things we're talking about leader emergence that's whether somebody looks like a leader and whether others see them in that way and then we've got leader effectiveness which is basically looking at whether the leader's team actually performs and it's important to know as well these things these two things don't always match right so somebody can look like a leader and emerge as a leader but not be very effective in terms of team performance okay another idea i guess worth flagging that i'm not going to go into because we have talked about it before is the idea that leaders are born and not made we have done that as a truth or lie before it kind of feeds into this whole great man theory go back to the episode i will find it and put it in the show notes if you're interested in that specific slant on it i'm not really going to dip into that today are we clear yes we're clear i like this we've defined everything we and we don't even need to define the word definition because you've told us what that means so yes i think we're we're all on the same page here lee i like it we're all in the car so the case for the strongest evidence comes from a 2002 study by timothy judge and some of his mates rather than running a single experiment they looked across 73 different studies and basically asked if we add all this up what does it tell us what's that called Al um do you know what I'm sorry I was distracted uh give me the give me the question again give me the question again so rather than running a single study they looked at 73 separate studies oh so they did so they did a meta-analysis they did they did which is and I know we talk about it a lot but we like them because it's a very reliable way to kind of draw conclusions because you're looking at you're not kind of relying on one study looking at a bigger sample of people and you know different settings what they basically found was the extroversion was the single strongest personality predictor of leadership right so they measured the strength of that relationship using what we call a correlation number but correlation basic a number between one and zero zero meaning two things have nothing in common one meaning they are perfectly correlated you move she moves soulmates kind of thing and typically we'll get a number somewhere between they got a correlation of 0.31 and do you remember our little trick Al if you square a correlation you get a predictive percentage yes so 0.31 times 0.31 is 10 exactly so extroversion accounts around 10 of what determines whether someone is seen as a leader so what the researchers looked at here is leader emergence.

27:50Leanne:It might not sound like very much, but across every personality trait, researchers tested, nothing predicted leadership more consistently than extroversion. Oh, really? Yeah. So even though it's quite, it's only 10%, it's actually, that's one of the highest things that predict leader. Personality aspects. Personality aspects of leader emergence. Yes. Not necessarily of leader effectiveness. Yes. Okay. So a larger review in 2019 pulled together 97 different studies and that looked at 165 different work-related variables. What's that in English, please? Of course, it's things like job performance, motivation, communication, satisfaction and leadership effectiveness.

28:32Leanne:So extraversion in this meta-analysis was linked to better outcomes in 90 % of the workplace factors. So for leadership specifically as well in terms of leadership effectiveness, the correlation was 0.34, which is around 12 % of what drives leadership ratings. This is how individuals would rate the effectiveness of their leader. Two of the studies looked at how all this works in practice. A 2022 study found that extroverted leaders tend to be more engaged at work. So they're more energized and more invested. And that engagement translates into better team performance. Then we have a study following almost 400 military leaders over two years.

29:14Leanne:What's that called, Al? A longitudinal study. Yes, it is. Danny Wareham would like that, military study. He would, he would. They found that extroversion predicted effectiveness through something very specific, and that was their leader's own confidence in their ability to lead. So if a leader felt confident, that confidence shaped how they performed. Okay. We then have some research on transformational leadership. that's the style associated with inspiring and motivating people which we probably associate with these extroverted leaders like Steve Jobs and Oprah they found that extroversion is the strongest again it's the strongest personality predictor so extroverts tended to come across as charismatic and charisma sits at the heart of transformational leadership so the case for the claim is fairly real actually because we've got some large samples here across settings, extraversion consistently points towards leadership.

30:06And that makes sense because you feel like that, you know, the Steve Jobs coming on a stage. I hope no one clips that and just Steve Jobs appearing on a stage. And then you're almost like you're enthralled by it. So you sit there and like Tony Robbins is another example where you just sit there and assuming you agree with what he's doing. You're like, oh my God, this guy's a God.

30:28Leanne:Do you think that's still a thing? or do you think this falls into now like millennial gen x cringe that the gen zeds and alphas would talk about because i'm thinking about have you seen that film don't look up uh yes i think so george no with like meryl streep and there's the um and jennifer what's her name garner no other one lawrence right and there's the asteroid and it's gonna hit earth oh i think so and the tech leader in that who like comes on stage just like yeah and it's like cringy cringy i just wonder if that's a bit that now i don't know i bet it is but it is we'll never know because we never hang around with these people they what they're not interested in us at all if you're under the age of 20 let us know whether 20 i think under 30 is i told you how i was touch anyway right back to back to the thing so that was the argument for if you left it at that i'd be like right okay i agree 100 this is that an extroverted person will be a great leader yeah that's my thoughts yeah and that's often where the trouble lies is that people read one source of of information or or verdict on something and then go right well there you go i know the answer without critically analyzing what else is out there are which is what we do which is why this segment works so well don't you think yes look in your eyes suggesting that let we've got the four now have we yeah no the against no that's the four that's the four so now let's have the against to the against so So the cracks in this start to appear when we actually ask the question, if we're looking at leaders, whose teams are actually performing better?

32:06Right.

32:07Leanne:So forget about emergence, forget about how their direct reports might rate them in terms of effectiveness. How is a team actually performing? Now, our good friend Adam Grant did some research on this in 2011. Whose podcast has just been knocked off one of our listeners' lists. Yes, shame. it's been a mixed week for you Adam really isn't it sorry what did Adam say what you should really do Adam is actually come on the podcast and then we can set some of this joke anyway Adam did some wonderful work with some of his friends back in 2011 and they tracked actual store profits across 57 pizza delivery branches over 7 weeks they found that it depended entirely on the team in terms of how effective the leader was so when employees were happy to follow instructions options extroverted managers produce better results but when employees were proactive they were regularly coming up with ideas and changes extroverted managers actually performed worse and the quieter managers outperformed them they then tested this in a lab with 163 participants and they got the same result the reason they said came down to the idea that proactive employees felt that extroverted leaders weren't really listening and there wasn't much room for their ideas whereas quieter leaders made more space so basically the best results came when the leader's style matched the team's behavior yeah okay so a bit more recent 2022 added another layer to this the energy and drive extroverted leaders bring is most useful when goals are vague and the path is a bit uncertain.

33:49Leanne:So when an organisation is very sure about where they are, they have very clear processes, lots of structure, lots of clear defined goals, the advantage of being an extrovert completely pretty much disappears. So extroverts are kind of good when nobody knows what they're doing. Then we have a Norwegian study, Colson and Langvik. I just wanted to say Langvik. they looked inside extroversion itself and broke it down a little bit more so as we said in our definition there's different components to being an extrovert so they actually looked at these individual components so they looked at assertiveness which is like speaking up taking charge pursuing goals that was linked to better leadership outcomes but excitement seeking so that desire for novelty and risk was rated negatively by teams on how well their leader managed people and got results the study was relatively small so we need to approach those with some caution but what's really interesting about this one and important about this one is that the research has made the point that extroversion isn't one thing it's lots of it's you know it's a few different it will translate to a few different behaviors it will have different impacts in terms of leadership and this is where we kind of shift away from personality into behavior research because behavior is actually what plays out in the organization isn't rather than how we prefer to recharge ourselves or kind of where we feel at our best selves it's how those traits actually translate into into behavior then the research i wanted to pull up on this comes from beverly alimo metcalf and robert albin metcalf wait wait i know this Bev and Bob I know this this is Juliet Alvin Metcalf the one who was she was our guest about six weeks ago yes she was she comes from a very strong psychology dynasty just Juliet and this is genuinely groundbreaking research groundbreaking leadership research it was in the UK it looked at the public sector and almost 1500 managers and they asked them to describe the behaviours of the best leader they'd ever worked with directly.

36:04Leanne:And the single most powerful factor, which explained twice as much variance as all other factors combined, was genuine concern for others. So these were things like listening, supporting development, showing real interest in individuals was so important. Whereas things like charisma, inspiration, the qualities that were most associated with extroversion were far less effective. perspective so don't mind as i said genuine concern explains twice as much variance as all of the factors combined together wow and we know that that is something that's typically a behavior we see more from introverted people oh so this is a plot twist it is a plot twist there's also research and i can't remember whether it is this specific research or whether it was a follow-up study um from bev and bob but i can't i'm so sorry juliet if you're listening bev and bob um from yes from them um that actually was one of the few studies to actually show causation so we talk a lot about correlation they actually dug deeper and found found causation in terms of organizational performance um around this behavior model anyway moving then to i guess keeping with this kind of behavior theme there was a large 2024 meta-analysis that found a pattern behavior called honesty humility which is treating people fairly avoiding exploitation not seeking status for one's own sake and that predicted leadership effectiveness of the correlation of 0.25 when you added that to the standard personality model that doubled the amount of leadership effectiveness researchers could explain from four percent to ten percent interesting so when you kind of combine these behaviors with personality we get some real weight in terms of predicting leadership effectiveness one final thing i guess to say on this kind of as against most studies measure leadership effectiveness by asking people to rate their leader and that isn't always very effective because there was a 2007 analysis that found those ratings were shaped by what people expect a leader to look like so what stereotypical visions do we have of leaders so if they're loud and gregarious like Steve Jobs walking around on stage, we see that as an effective leader.

38:26Leanne:Extroverts fit that, so we tend to rate them higher in terms of our perception of what a leader should be. Excellent. Okay, I get that. So, I think from what you said there, I'm veering towards it is a lie, but what's the actual official stamp on this? You're right, Al. You're right. It's a lie. Or at least it's not enough of a truth to be useful. because the evidence for the claim is kind of real. Extroversion is the single strongest personality predictor of leadership across decades of research. But there's two kind of problems with that oversimplification. The first is the numbers themselves.

39:06Leanne:So even as the strongest personality predictor, it still only explains 10 % of what makes somebody an effective leader. There's a whole 90 % of a pitch that has nothing to do with extroversion and more than likely nothing to do at all with personality. Personality is not a very effective predictor of leadership effectiveness. And as we've said, the second is actually what's being measured. So yes, there is a strong relationship between extroversion and leader emergence, but leader emergence, looking like a leader and being seen like a leader does not necessarily, and in most cases, doesn't translate to being effective in terms of team performance.

39:42Leanne:So I've kind of gone, it could be, it depends, I guess, technically, but I'm like no it's a lie because the fact is if you're a business leader out there who wants to hire a leader the last thing that you probably want to look at is introversion or extroversion neither are particularly particularly standalone as personality traits effective in terms of predicting future performance what we do know is that the behaviors are what we call pro-social behaviors things like listening genuine concern for people creating space is one of the biggest predictors of effective leadership in terms of actual team performance which is where i always kind of prefer behavior-based assessment tools in recruitment as opposed to personality beautiful i love that i love that because i honestly thought it was going the other way um i think there's lots of people you can think of who are outgoing and you'll be like yeah they're you know yeah the born leaders look at them like we talked about the oldest as well didn't we at one point yeah saying we're seeing their born leaders and you can get it but no it makes perfect sense it makes absolutely perfect sense so maybe zuck is actually because he's a slightly more introverted which means actually you've just told me you can't do that you just said you can't go he's extroverted she's introverted and therefore yeah my question be is is mark zuck by creating a digital clone of himself showing genuine concern for people i don't know maybe depends how how good that clone is and how it's used i guess but it doesn't scream i really care about my people no unless he's actually going i can't i don't there's not enough of me to listen to everyone so i'm creating this but even And then you're going to do something in the aggregate.

41:12Leanne:It doesn't have to just be you, does it? As a singular one person. Fabulous. Anyway, maybe we should do narcissism next. Oh, maybe, maybe. Why did you look so much at me when you said that? No, I was looking at Mark. Okay, so we've got another one of those coming up next week. If you have your own that you'd like us to either, maybe it's a question for Leanne, or maybe you are some kind of fancy schmancy scientist and you want to come on like Chris, who's coming on, I think it's next week or week after, I can't remember. We've got Dr. Jake coming back. We've got loads of people in the pipeline to come and give you one of these truths or lies.

41:43If it sounds like you, drop us a line. Yeah. Okay, so I think it's on to our world famous weekly workplace surgery where I put your questions to Leanne. Leanne, I have three questions as would be my one. Question number one, should I bother with engagement surveys? This person says, I've been thinking about introducing engagement surveys into my business, but a conversation with another business owners made me doubt myself. Their view was that surveys cost time, money and don't really lead to meaningful change. It's made me question whether I'm just measuring problems rather than fixing them. So I'm unsure, are they actually worth doing or are I better off focusing on other ways to understand how my team are feeling?

42:20We should have got Bill Yost in for this one. Channel your inner Bill Yost. Tell us what your thoughts are, Leigh.

42:27Leanne:Can I challenge my inner Leanne instead? Because I do this stuff too, you know. Yes, that's a good point. That's a good point. I'm sorry, Leanne. It's okay. Oh, no. bill's better than me um bill's got a pirate flag what would bill say what would leanne say surveys yeah they do cost time and money and they're they're not going to lead to any meaningful change as a survey alone a survey is a diagnostic and it'll help you understand the problem you're trying to solve so if you're your colleague this fellow business owner is running a survey expecting it to drive change then respectfully they're doing it wrong we just need to use surveys amongst other methods to help define the problem uh john amici talked about this in his in his book um and i thought it's a really nice way of putting it the most powerful thing you can do for somebody who is lost is tell them where they are and this is exactly what a really great engagement survey or psychosocial risk survey or culture survey will do it will tell you exactly kind of what's working within your business right now what's not working so well and where the real risk hotspots are so you can design the spoke interventions to actually target the problem and drive some meaningful change so i guess to answer your question succinctly yes engagement surveys are worth doing to help you define the problem you can use other ways to understand how your team are feeling i would never use a survey just in isolation alone i'd want to pair that with like focus groups or you know conversations with the senior leadership team an understanding of of kind of systems and documentation within the organization to give a bit more context they're really good ways of gathering this data as well but either way however you gather the data acting on it is the most important thing if you're gonna gather feedback and do nothing with it i promise you will you will do more damage it's better just not bothering at all um so they are useful there are other ways of gathering the data but the most important thing is actually doing something with it fabulous fabulous far better than what bill yost would have said i doubt it i think he would have made a funny joke or compared i don't know brought in pirates or something maybe maybe but I think that's a really good point that um a lot of people think I'm going to do an engagement survey because I need to fix things and like you've said that's like going and going to the doctor and saying I've got a sore leg and and them just going it was you know that's actually a bad example because the doctor would also tell you what was wrong and give you something to fix it but that's a bad example but no it's it's the right analogy it's just the other way around isn't it so you wouldn't you know you wouldn't go to a hospital and a doctor just say just look at you or you've got a broken leg and put you in a cast for six weeks you'd expect them to do some investigations some diagnostics before they do that and that's what engagement surveys are they're a diagnostic thank you for rescuing my analogy and i appreciate it okay on to question number two is generational tension something i'm supposed to fix to this person the background this person they manage a mixed age team and they've discovered the tension between younger and older employees becoming a real issue so they say my gen z team member set sorry my gen z team members set clear boundaries and want quick feedback and reasoning behind decisions some of the more experienced staff say that as entitlement or a lack of commitment i'm finding myself spending more time managing the friction than the actual work is this something i'm responsible for leanne as a manager should i be fixing this thoughts yes cool question number three why is it that see i my instinct would be like uh no let them get on with it because it's them who's having the who decided that the older people decided the people are entitled young people entitled and the younger people probably decided the old people are just old farts who just don't know anything yeah but they're probably not going to get on with it without some kind of intervention to bring them bring them together is it i think i guess first of all is it's it could be a generational thing those labels can be helpful and they if you look at them in terms of cohorts they can also be unhelpful in terms of creating divides so i'll be careful about how when you're talking this through with a team describing them as like gen z or gen x or boomers or whatever else because I think that the fact is whether it's about age or not what you're basically seeing is a clash of expectations about work so you've got one group who really values clarity and feedback and firm boundaries and others that really value autonomy and trust and a sense of earning authority and reputation and both are actually pretty reasonable none of them you know none of that's wrong they've just been shaped in kind of different different environments so I think in terms of what you can do as a manager is kind of take these unspoken norms and start to articulate them and it's what you know we might call it if you do it formally like a team charter in terms of what good look like what good looks like what's expected or you just have this kind of general conversation about it I think it's sometimes worth putting things down on paper or you know document somewhere just so you don't leave things open to interpretation and it's defining things like as a team how quickly do we think people should get feedback when is it okay to challenge decisions what does good communication look like and when you're having those conversations it's important to kind of reframe all of them as strengths so it's not that people are entitled people are pushing for clarity and transparency or it's not that kind of you know your gen x is a are rigid it's just people who bring experience and judgment to a situation and that should be respected so i think having these kind of conversations and framing them very much as strengths kind of shifts what is currently a conflict into how we could use our skills and strengths in a complementary way for the benefit of the team i also think as well we know from the research that in terms of engagement and performance when we have different people with different experience working together we see that diversity of thinking and that does translate into higher engagement high performance so this is a really great opportunity for you because what you you now know is you have a diverse team and diverse teams are really really great to have but the risk is is leaving it with so much unstructured expectation around what the behaviors that team should be it can turn into some of the friction and instability that you're seeing so i think it's worth having that conversation and turning the situation to something that could be actually really useful for you as a manager as an organization as a team i love it i love it um you you did a segment if this if you're listening the person who wrote this and also you um you're you have a similar thing they ended a little segment a little while ago and i can't remember which one it was but you said something like you you gave some examples what people said about a generation and then there I won't spoil it, but there were some surprises.

49:32So it's quite a fun game you could play. So that sounds like something you definitely should go and listen to. Leigh, are you ready for the final question?

49:39Leanne:Yes. Okay, so this person is about to start a new job, and they're saying, what do I look out for in my first few weeks? So they say, I'm about to start a new job. I'm trying to go in with my eyes open. In those first few days or weeks, what are the signs you've joined a genuinely healthy workplace versus one that might be a bit of a disaster? What should we be paying attention to? oh this sounds like something you probably should have done before you accepted the job perhaps but anyway who am I to say yeah maybe I guess it's hard to get in there really isn't it and get enough information but you're right you should have you know done some some due diligence by maybe getting in touch people already work in the organization but the fact is you've got a new job congratulations my friend congratulations well done and what I'd like this is kind of going into it with in kind of like I'm in control this situation whereas they can feel a lack of control I guess if you've you maybe feel like you've been misled at some point down the line but so I like this I think a healthy workplace as a new employee basically means that somebody's thought about your experience you're not an afterthought people are fairly consistent in what they say so if you're going to different team members or leaders the messaging is generally the same and clarity you know where you stand what expectations are and all that kind of good stuff so in terms of structure things look out for is there a clear onboarding plan ideally they would have already given you that onboarding plan before you start so you know what's going to happen that's going to include things like time set aside for you actually to learn how things work not just figure out as you go along meeting key people and it all feels intentional you know it's not just that people are like oh I'll look after you because I've got time today there's some kind of intended structure to it um in terms of more clarity what's expected to you what's expected in the first 30 days 90 days what does success look like what the priorities priorities of your job and how that fit into the bigger priorities of the organization and i think really just just does what you're sold match the reality that you're now in so in terms of the culture in terms of flexible working in terms of any policies they promised you in terms of what workload looks like how the team interacts together um is going to be really important and I think finally it's how how people interact like how do they talk when they're being honest when the boss isn't in the room when there may be a cup of tea or you're just over slack or or whatever else like is the tone fairly positive is it fairly negative or cynical are people talking behind other people's backs Because that's, you know, the obvious kind of signs of toxicity or some incivility.

52:10Leanne:So I think they're the main things to look out for. But I think that that first week is going to tell you a lot in terms of that onboarding plan. And even if it's not as structured as you would have liked, or if there's somebody genuinely interested in the experience you're having in your first week, I think that's a really good sign. Excellent. You've just given us a masterclass on onboarding people there. That is brilliant. That should be, we should do something on that soon. I think onboarding yeah I do think I think in sales and marketing is one of the most most important parts of it when someone's just said yes you want to be delighting them and so is that but I think we probably just think oh well you know Dave starts today oh well there you go there's our SOPs on a Google Drive go and watch these videos and we'll talk to you tomorrow yeah yeah absolutely okay so if you have thank you Leanne if you have your own question that you want to put to Leanne then check out the show notes way to get in touch with us next Thursday or this Thursday actually we're joined by Aidan Fieder funnily enough I think Fida is an Isle of Man name and Aidan is Italian so he's Isle of Italia is he from the Isle of Man?

53:14Leanne:no I think I think maybe his mum is and his dad's from Italy have you ever been to the Isle of Man? no have you? no no I have a friend who goes quite regularly because of the TT races the motorbike races oh yeah I'd like to go actually I should we will go after this okay anyway so Aidan is going to join us one of the most I'm not going to spoil it one of the most incredible founder stories you're going to hear this year, I think. So definitely stay tuned for that. Leigh, anything else to add before we let these good people go? No usual. All the links are in the show notes, including how to get in touch with the show.

53:46Leanne:Come and follow along on LinkedIn. I was going to say Facebook then. We've not been on Facebook for two decades. Yeah, go over to LinkedIn, search for me, Al Truth, Lies and Work. That's where the convo finishes. Don't forget to tag us in anything. You see, we do mention it. we have a few things that people have sent in like james hardy sent in that his article if you're interested in doing truth or lie it just makes our job easier because we don't have to find the content and also we could showcase some other amazing people yes that too yes okay right so we'll see you next week bye oh see you thursday sorry i got it wrong see you thursday bye